


he sang

by BlackSclera



Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Past Child Abuse, mafuyu is a siren, siren!au, slightly bloody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 16:14:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,305
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20877047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackSclera/pseuds/BlackSclera
Summary: Monsters, the humans called them.(Family, Mafuyu thinks.)





	he sang

*

Sirens were terrifying creatures.

They had translucent finned ears, sharp teeth that mercilessly tore into meat, and claws that pierced through scales. No one was faster or stronger when blood wafts into their senses and flits through their gills; the little that manage to outrun are enthralled by their Song, rarely heard yet inescapable once sung.

The ocean was ruthless, and the sirens were even more so. They were feral.

_Monsters, _the humans called them.

(_Family, _Mafuyu thinks.)

*

His mother has an ethereal beauty that she carried in her small, reserved smiles and eyes that reminded him of dawn.

She was human with her round ears and pale legs but sometimes, the little that remained of her true blood and calling showed; her teeth would be too sharp or her voice would ring like the crashing of waves against a shore, and Mafuyu has never seen the ocean- _too young, too soft, they will tear you apart, _she had said - but he finds himself thinking of _home_, of endless blue and unfathomable depths, of silence and their Song.

She was his only connection to the rest of their kind, his only real family.

“_Mama?”_

“_Hm?”_

“_Can you sing me a Song?”_

She smiles.

(And she smiles, even in her death, sunset-colored hair spilling like fire behind her back. She smiles, and her death is so _human _it hurt Mafuyu to watch.

That very same night, he mourns.

His back splits open with its wavering gills, the skin of his legs melding and knitting itself together until dull scales pierced through and dug itself back into his flesh. The bones in his knees twisted, crumbled and broke under crawling scales, deep red bleeding into clear water.

Pain ripped through him relentlessly. Sweat broke on his skin, chest heaving with the attempted effort of breathing through his gills, and Mafuyu opens his mouth to sing.

His voice wavered, shrill and grating and inexperienced, but he sang until he’s pale and heaving through the cuts on his back, until his voice is breaking, until his father opens the door to the bathroom, a furious, exhausted look in his eyes.

He hadn’t known what his wife was, Mafuyu thinks as he watches horror rip through his expression at the sight of his sand-colored tail and glowing eyes, he hadn’t known.)

*

That night, things change.

*

_Mama, would you have sacrificed half of your life if you had known?_

He meets his father’s eyes, his own sunken, his cheeks hollowed. The water hasn’t been clean for weeks and he hasn’t eaten a decent meal for much longer. He was forbidden from leaving the tub and shifting back, though if he were to be completely honest with himself, he didn’t think he’d have the strength to shed his scales and split his flesh even if he tried.

“Why?” he asks. It pained him to speak, from his dry throat and the bruised skin of his face, but he forces himself to lift his chin and hold his stare. There’s a bit of fight left in him but it’s a fragile little thing.

His father slaps him, a revolted sneer twisting his lips.

“Shut up,” he spits like just talking to Mafuyu leaves a rotten taste in his mouth, “Don’t talk, you _monster._”

Mafuyu closes his eyes. Thinks of the golden ring he refused to remove on his finger.

(Half a soul for the man who had her heart, and a child who wasn’t quite human who longed for the ocean.)

_You would have, wouldn’t you?_

*

Half a year passes.

Mafuyu isn't dying but he isn't quite alive, either. 

Not yet_, _he thinks, _not yet._

*

The door downstairs closes with a faint click and if he wasn’t waiting for it, he wouldn’t have noticed. Instead, he waits and holds his breath, spends a few more minutes to make sure he’s really gone before exhaling through his gills and sliding deeper into the tub to get as much water as he can on his dried up and tearing scales.

It’s starting to feel a little cramped with his steadily growing tail - now a dull shade of pastel orange - but it wasn't unbearably uncomfortable. He can endure a little more.

Just a little more.

Carefully resting his head against the tiled wall, he groggily blinks his slitted eyes and hums. It’s a mere whisper compared to the splashing of the water when he adjusts his position but he had a little bit of voice left and he can _try_.

So he does.

For days. Weeks.

He doesn’t expect anything to happen but he clings, doesn’t despair and wraps bony – _clawed_ – fingers into the little hope he had.

*

Then something did.

*

Yoshida Yuuki comes into his home, uninvited, with a dazed look in his eyes that spoke of enthrallment.

“Oh,” the boy says, and Mafuyu’s heart twists because he sees his mother in the color of his eyes and his gentle smile, “it was _you_.”

*

Mafuyu heals.

Learns to love.

(He thinks of his mother, the way she longingly gazes at pictures of the ocean and the way her nails would scrape over the gold ring on her finger.

He asks _why,_ _why would you sacrifice _home_, why would you willingly peel your scales and cut your flesh to be with a man who didn’t even know who you are, why would you choose to love someone like _him_-_

Then, he looks at Yuuki, and Mafuyu realizes he understands.)

*

Sometimes, Yuuki touches him. He touches his face, slides his thumb across his cheek, down to his lips, presses and lets his thumb rest in between his fanged teeth and wet tongue. Mafuyu wouldn’t bite, Yuuki knows, and he’d find himself staring into the smile painfully painted on the other’s face, would wish he could take it away, his throat throbbing with heat and a want to sing.

“Aren’t you scared?” Mafuyu whispers, his eyes glowing amber as he lifts his clawed hands to hold Yuuki’s face in a deceptively kind touch. His hands are free to roam, mouth unsealed. All it takes is a breath of a melody, he thinks, a _Song_, and Yuuki will break, fall apart, _bleed __under his fingertips and he will let him__-_

Yuuki breathes a laugh into his lips, unflinching even as Mafuyu cuts into the skin under his right eye.

Sometimes, Yuuki touches him. Delicately, carefully, like he’s afraid Mafuyu will unravel and crumble under his touch.

“I love you,” he says, a secret that scorches his skin and strangles him. “I love you, Mafuyu.”

(Sirens were terrifying creatures.

They are feral man-eaters that had the strength to rip humans apart piece by piece. Their bodies are built to kill, their beauty designed to deceive, their voices their greatest weapon.)

A broken sound leaves him, a wounded little thing that is pulled from his throat leaving behind fractured glass in its wake.

(But their hearts are just human.)

And Yuuki knows.

*

_We don’t get to choose who we fall in love with, Mafuyu._

Half a soul for the man who had her heart. He remembers his father, thinks of the gold ring on his finger, the unreadable emotion behind his eyes as he pulls his fist back to hit him, leaving him bruised and bleeding. He remembers Yuuki, his sunset-colored eyes, his kind smile and unconditional love, remembers his warm hand in his.

“We don’t,” he whispers, tears dropping on his clenched fists as he pulls, pulls, _pulls_ at the guitar’s strings, and he thinks all it takes is a breath of a melody, a _Song-_

*

_"I can't live without you!"_

_He takes a breath, faltering and hurt and unthinking._

_Then molten gold bleeds into his eyes, his fangs bared-_

_"Would you die for me then?!"_

_*_

Yuuki broke, fell apart, bled under his fingertips, and he let Mafuyu destroy him.


End file.
